Bird Bio

Rose Gardner is trying to build a new normal. One that leaves the Fenton County crime world - including James "Skeeter" Malcolm, the current king - behind. Her best friend and roommate is a big part of that effort, but Neely Kate is busy building her own life anew. She disappeared for a few days, scaring the spit out of Rose - which is why Rose finds it impossible to deny her when she suggests they look for a missing parrot. Only this time Neely Kate isn't interested in the reward money - she's set them up to work with a cranky private investigator.

From the opening story, "Willing" - about a second-rate movie actress in her 30s who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being - Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time.

I always knew darkness crept through this city; like a shadow, it never really goes away, always watching, always waiting. People sin and people kill; it's a way of life. I just never expected to be thrown into the middle of a war I had no hope of surviving. Alexander Silver is as brutal as he is beautiful. A devil in disguise. The man destined to end me. I didn't go looking for trouble, and yet it found me, nonetheless. I could either join it or let it crush me.

When we see a bird flying from branch to branch happily chirping, it is easy to imagine they lead a simple life of freedom, flight, and feathers. What we don't see is the arduous, life-threatening challenges they face at every moment. Beaks, Bones and Bird Songs guides the listener through the myriad, and often almost miraculous, things that birds do every day to merely stay alive. Like the goldfinch, which manages extreme weather changes by doubling the density of its plumage in winter.

I’ve been content with it just being us for a while, but it's my last year of high school, and I’ve missed out on so much. Parties, girlfriends, and dating. If I can’t have them in the way my heart wants, I may as well start having fun, right?

Wrong, because they don’t seem to like my new life choices.

His name is Dex. He's huge, terrifying, and has an edge to him that I shouldn't find intriguing, but I do. He's also the enforcer to a rival family, and my current prison guard. Dex wants me. I can see it in his eyes. Feel it in his innocent touch. He could break me with ease. But he hasn't. Instead, he's threatened to cut off any hand that dares to try. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he cares about me. But blood means everything in this world, and we're on opposite sides of a war. After all, I'm the Romano mafia princess. He's nothing but an Allegretti.